7 Top Tips for Writing Blog Posts to Captivate Your Audience

With an ever increasing amount of blogs appearing across the Internet, it is vital that your blog posts stand out from the rest. Here are seven tips to help you improve the quality of your blog posts, and therefore increase your blog’s popularity and online presence.

If a reader opens your blog and is presented with long, rambling paragraphs, they are likely to get bored and drift to other pages before even reading the entirety of your post. As such, ensure you display your blog in short and engaging paragraphs in order to sustain reader interest and captivate them to seek out your other work.

2-Check for spelling mistakes

Although the occasional spelling mistake is not going to alienate your readers, frequent and consistent spelling errors undermine your creative authority and lowers reader expectations and respect for your work. If you write using Microsoft Word, you can effortlessly employ the spellchecker to resolve this issue. Alternatively, there are a wealth of free spelling and grammar checks online to help you perfect your work.

3- Make your text accessible and easy to read

Following on from spelling and grammatical errors, it is fundamental that your blogs are written in a style which is accessible to readers. Although it is easier and quicker to write, avoid using text speak which distances readers, forcing them to interpret your text and thus distancing them from the message within your work. Similarly, avoid shifting perspective within your post. Before commencing writing, decide whether you are going to be communicating to your reader in the first, second or third person and, once chosen, sustain this perspective throughout. Although this may seem pedantic, it is subconscious grammatical errors such as these which detach readers and prevent them from wholly engaging themselves with your work.

Although a blog need not be perfect, if you concentrate on proofreading your work after you have written it you can be certain you have adequately expressed your intended content to your readers. Proofreading enables you to improve the fluidity and cogency of your writing, as you can solidify any points which you now realize have not been expressed as competently as you originally intended.

5-Wait a few days before posting your blog

You cannot be sufficiently critical of your blog if you have just finished writing it. You are more likely to skim read your content and gloss over important points which require modification. Instead, put your blog post to one side and resume reading it the next day or even the day after that. This way the text will have faded from your mind and you can revisit it with fresh eyes, much like your intended audience will when reading it for the first time. This will enable you to glean new insight towards your blog, reading it with less immediate prejudice and providing a potential opportunity for further improvement.

6-Scrutinize your content for contradictions

Analyse the message and overall content of your post to see whether you have contradicted yourself in any way. Pay close attention to the overriding theme of your post, and ensure your initial message at the beginning of your post corresponds with your eventual conclusion. This will present your post as well-rounded and informed, granting readers more confidence in your authorial voice, and improving the likelihood of readers sharing your blog post with others.

7-Be passionate!

Captivating content is fundamental to the success of any blog post. If you look at professional blogs from all niches, from digital marketing agencies such as Viglink, to international newspapers such as Khaama Press to even doubling glazing window companies, such as Sash Smart, they are all passionate about their content. Therefore it is crucial you choose content for which you have a strong passion. This could be passion towards a hobby, a current trend, new technologies or even a personal business idea. Readers will recognize your passion and will be more likely to discover said passion for themselves. Contemplate and research your content so that you can effectively communicate to your readers what it is about your chosen topic which sparks your interest and incites passion. If you can express why you are emotionally invested in your content, readers will be more likely to identify with your posts and share them with others, thus increasing the overall popularity of your blog posts across the Internet.

George Campbell

This article was written by George Campbell, a freelance writer from Birmingham, England. George has been a teacher for four years and he loves writing about education but he is versatile and he also writes across a variety of other topics. You can keep up to date with George by following him on Google+ and Twitter.

I'm a regular, ordinary person who happened to learn WordPress. My goal is to make it easier and more fun for busy entrepreneurs, as well as people who are techno-phobic, to build their businesses using WordPress. I speak your language and not Geek.